Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Combinatorial / Pairwise Tools

I’ve recommended combinatorial or pairwise tools frequently in my Automation Isn’t Shiny Toys talk. I think it’s a great way to cut down large matrices of input data or configurations. These tools can save you incredible amounts of time – as James Bach mentions on his Allpairs blurb, you can potentially cut 10,000,000,000 test cases down to 177.

Them’s big apples, folks.

Here are a few of the resources I’ve mentioned in that segment of the talk:

Pairwise.org. A great starting place to learn about combinatorial or pairwise testing.

ACTS. Another nice tool from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It’s freely available, but you have to ask.

MbUnit. Lovely test framework for the .NET platform which has combinatorial features built in!

I encourage you to do a bit of reading on the subject and see if it might be helpful for you!

Update: I totally forgot to mention Hexawise, an interesting tool/service. I haven’t personally used it, but I’ve read up on it and follow founder Justin Hunter on Twitter. Interesting pricing model, too.

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About Me

I'm the owner/principal of Guidepost Systems. I help lots of great folks figure out what works and what doesn't in the world of delivering quality software -- something I'm very passionate about. I'm also a Father trying to remain sane while trying to build great software, herd my kids around, fix school lunches and handle the yardwork. (And roast great coffee!)